Fathers Role in a Childs Life - Research Paper Example

? Literature Review of Institute> Literature Review It is very important to study the impact of father’s role in a child’s life before we go ahead with our hypothesis, and this makes it vital to mention past literature that determined how father’s physical and emotional presence brought positivity in the lives of children, with the help of which they were able to cope with their future relations effectively. Based on this idea, Krampe (2009) presented his research in which he asserted that father’s presence actually meant his psychological presence in the life of a child. In his article, he has explained that father’s emotional presence could be explained in terms of his child’s inner sense that recognized the father as an important person; father’s relationship with the child; family influences on this relationship; and, cultural and religious beliefs about father-child relationship. Krampe (2009) has presented a conceptual model in his research that explained the importance of father’s psychological presence in the life of a child. There is a very interesting research presented by Byrd-Craven et al. (2012), in which the researchers have studied how women’s relationship with their fathers affected their reactions to stressors in their lives. They studied this through observing the activity of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis (salivary cortisol) and autonomic nervous system (salivary alpha-amylase, sAA) in females, when they interacted with their peers and discussed problems. These females were all adolescents. The study reported that those females who reported positive emotional relationship with their fathers had low pre-task cortisol levels and attenuated cortisol levels during peer interaction. Contrarily, those females who reported negative emotional attachment with their fathers showed high pre-task cortisol levels and elevated cortisol level during peer interaction. The researchers found that father-daughter emotional attachment was crucial in enabling females to effectively cope with the stressors in their social lives. This study is helpful in determining the importance of father’s emotional availability to daughters. There is an interesting study that helps us identify that girls go through a myriad of physical and emotional problems if they are grown up in the absence of father. This study makes us relate fathers’ absence to fathers’ emotional absence. For us, both are very similar approaches. Tither and Ellis (2008) conducted a research including sibling comparison under controlled genetic and environmental factors. In a community sample of sister pairs, the researchers found that in families that experienced fathers’ absence (physical or emotional), younger sisters crossed puberty (menstruation) earlier than their older sisters or other girls of their age belonging to families without paternal dysfunction. They found that family disruption in the form of paternal dysfunction had a significant effect on the onset of puberty in girls. This study is very helpful in determining the effect of paternal emotional and physical presence or absence on female offspring. McLanahan, Tach and Schneider (2013) presented a very useful research that studied the causal effects of father’s absence in children’s lives. The researchers employed a myriad of different innovative techniques and research designs to determine the impact of father absence using “including studies using lagged dependent variable models, growth curve models, individual fixed effects models, sibling fixed effects models, natural experiments, and propensity score matching models” (p.399). They found that rigorous design methods were more effective in studying father-child relationships. They have mentioned that studies that employed rigorous methods as compared to traditional cross-sectional designs, led to the conclusion that father absence creates manifold negative impacts on children behavioral problems. It can be understood that these behavioral problems lead to disastrous effects on children’s practical lives in which they have to deal with their spouses. The studies mentioned in this research are helpful in concluding that children, especially girls, strongly need the presence of their fathers in order to be able to cope with their practical lives. Fathers’ emotional absence can also be a result of paternal psychological or psychiatric disorders. This makes it important to understand that mental disorders in fathers make them emotionally distant to their children, causing the latter to undergo various problems in their psychosocial development. Supporting this, Ramchandani and Psychogiou (2009) conducted a research, which was actually a review of literature studying the effect of maternal and paternal psychiatric dysfunction on children’s behavioral and emotional well being. They reviewed the findings obtained from those studies, and concluded that children with mentally disordered fathers went through similar kinds of psychosocial difficulties as those with mentally disordered mothers. However, they found in studies that were conducted on mentally disordered fathers and their children, that boys were more at risk of showing negative behavioral patterns than girls. This study helps in understanding how girls and boys react to the absence of proper paternal support in their lives. It is seen that most of the literature talks about the effects of fathers’ emotional and physical involvement in their children’s lives. A similar study has been conducted by Howard et al. (2006) in which they have studied fathers' influence in the lives of children with adolescent mothers. The research included 134 children of adolescent mothers, and father influence in their lives in the first 10 years of life was studied. The researchers found that the children who had consistent father contact in first 8 years of their lives showed better socioeconomic development and academic achievements in school. They showed positive behavioral patterns, and showed very good performance in school activities. This research is helpful in determining the importance of fathers’ role in the lives of both normal and at-risk children. This research can serve as a guide in determining the effects of father emotional absence in the lives of female children. It would be interesting to mention here a research that has a fascinating point of view. Hawkins, Amato and King (2007) conducted a research in which they used nationally representative data from the 1995 and 1996 waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). They used this data to estimate whether father involvement was a cause of, or effect of, children wellbeing. It is a very interesting piece of literature which studied this side of the picture. The research included 3,394 adolescents whose academic achievement and psychosocial wellbeing was studied in relation to their non-resident fathers’ emotional involvement. The researchers found that “…levels of adolescent well-being cause, rather than result from, levels of nonresident father involvement” (p.990). This study, however, is very confusing besides being interesting, because children’s behavior resulting from their fathers’ involvement or otherwise is studied normally. There is a very important research by Mallers et al. (2010) in which they have studied perceptions of childhood relationships with mother and father. They studied how children took their attachment with parents into adulthood where they had to deal with daily emotional and stressor experiences. These stressor experiences, for girls, may include their relationships with their husbands. The study included 912 men and women aged between 25 and 74. Their responses about their father-child relationship and daily stressor experience were recorded. Although the researchers found out that adults, who reported positive father-child relationship in childhood, dealt with stressors more efficiently than those who reported negative father-child relationships; yet, they also found that this was true more in case of male participants. The research concluded that father-son relationship was related to less emotional reactivity to stress as compared to father-daughter relationship. This study triggers the urge to learn more about the relation between father-daughter relationship and daughters’ emotional reactivity to stress. A similar research has been conducted by Emmanuelle (2009) that determines the role of mother and father involvement or emotional presence in the decision-making ability of their adolescents. The research included 241 adolescents as participants. They completed a questionnaire that was based on their relationship with their parents, especially fathers. The level of complexity the adolescents faced while making decisions about their academics and careers was also noted. The researcher found that those adolescents, who enjoyed healthy relationships with their mothers and fathers, were good at decision-making, identity development, and career selection, as compared to those who went through emotional absence of either of the two parents. This study is useful in gaining an exact idea about the role of parents in polishing the interpersonal and professional competencies of children. Although this research focuses on both parents, yet this can help in obtaining a general idea about parental emotional presence and its impacts. Ellis et al. (2003) conducted a research in which they studied the impact of father absence on daughters’ sexual activities. They studied whether father absence was responsible for girls getting involved in sexual activities at a young age. Teenage pregnancy was also studied as an important effect of father absence. The researchers conducted longitudinal studies in the United States, including 762 girls as participants, aged between 5 and 18 years. The researchers found that, “Greater exposure to father absence was strongly associated with elevated risk for early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy” (p.801). The effect of father emotional and physical absence resulted in early sexual activity more than any other negative behavior in girls. This study is helpful in obtaining an idea that the girls, who experience their fathers’ emotional absence, are likely to undergo dysfunctional sexual and marital life issues. The above mentioned literature review concludes that father’s involvement in children’s lives is very important. It suggests that when father is emotionally or physically distant to his children, especially daughters, this leads to many disastrous and psychological impacts upon the young minds. This leads to my hypothesis that emotionally distant relationship between fathers and their daughters makes the latter go through severe obstacles while managing their future relationships. Hence, hypothesis of my research is: “Women who are raised with emotionally absent father tend to be promiscuous and insecure; and thus, they struggle maintaining long term relationships.” References Byrd-Craven, J., Auer, B. J., Granger, D. A., Massey, A. R. (2012). The father–daughter dance: The relationship between father–daughter relationship quality and daughters' stress response. Journal of Family Psychology, 26(1), pp. 87-94. doi: 10.1037/a0026588 Ellis, B.J., Bates, J.E., Dodge, K.A., Fergusson, D.M., Horwood, L.J., Pettit, G.S., & Woodward, L. (2003). Does father absence place daughters at special risk for early sexual activity and teenage pregnancy? Child Development, 74(3), pp. 801–821. DOI: 10.1111/1467-8624.00569 Emmanuelle, V. (2009). Inter-relationships among attachment to mother and father, self-esteem, and career indecision. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 75(2), pp. 91-99. Doi: 10.1016/j.jvb.2009.04.007 Hawkins, D. N., Amato, P. R., & King, V. (2007). Nonresident father involvement and adolescent well-being: father effects or child effects? American Sociological Review, 72(6), pp. 990-1010. doi: 10.1177/000312240707200607 Howard, K. S., Lefever, J. E. B., Borkowski, J. G., & Whitman, T. L. (2006). Fathers' influence in the lives of children with adolescent mothers. Journal of Family Psychology, 20(3), pp. 468-476. doi: 10.1037/0893-3200.20.3.468 Krampe, E. M. (2009). When is the father really there? A conceptual reformulation of father presence. Journal of Family Issues, 30(7), pp. 875-897. doi: 10.1177/0192513X08331008 Mallers, M.H., Charles, S.T., Neupert, S.D., & Almeida, D.M. (2010). Perceptions of childhood relationships with mother and father: Daily emotional and stressor experiences in adulthood. Developmental Psychology, 46(6), pp.1651-1661. doi: 10.1037/a0021020 McLanahan, S., Tach, L., & Schneider, D. (2013). The causal effects of father absence. Annual Review of Sociology, 39, pp. 399-427. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-soc-071312-145704 Ramchandani, P., & Psychogiou, L. (2009). Paternal psychiatric disorders and children's psychosocial development. The Lancet, 374(9690), pp. 646-653. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)60238-5 Tither, J. M., Ellis, B. J. (2008). Impact of fathers on daughters' age at menarche: A genetically and environmentally controlled sibling study. Developmental Psychology, 44(5), pp. 1409-1420. doi: 10.1037/a0013065 Read More